What holds individuals and nations back is not always what we loudly blame. More often, it is what we quietly refuse to confront. In deeply religious societies, uncomfortable truths are often masked by spiritual explanations that absolve us of responsibility while offering emotional comfort.

Over time, this habit reshapes how failure, delay, and disappointment are interpreted, turning structural and personal shortcomings into metaphysical battles.

Earlier today, I had a conversation with a lady who profusely complained about a friend of her's, a first-class student who had been unemployed for close to 16 years after graduating with a first class.

To her, the friend’s predicament was a result of spiritual problems, because she once had a dream about her in which a spiritual attacker burned her certificates.

I retorted that this is exactly the mentality Ghana, as a nation, has been caught in. It is a mentality that allows us to outsource failure to invisible forces rather than interrogate our systems, habits, and choices.

To interrogate this belief, I proposed something simple: deductive reasoning grounded in shared experience. Since we both attended the University of Cape Coast, I asked that we reason together, not emotionally but empirically.

She knows a couple of my colleagues from the UCC House of Parliament, who are scattered across Ghana today. In fact, they all come from various ethnic groups in Ghana. I asked her whether, among these individuals, at least one did not come from a family that is allegedly battling witchcraft spells and all kinds of spiritual attacks.

Why is it that the majority of these people are doing better in life today, several years after school, than most of my other colleagues who sat with us in the same lecture halls and even graduated with better grade point averages than us? Why did the supposed spiritual attacks selectively fail?

The answer is uncomfortable but unavoidable. Success in life, even as a Christian, has very little, if anything at all, to do with spiritual chokeholds, witchcraft suspicions, and family gods. It has far more to do with personality, preparation, exposure, discipline, and individual prospects.

This does not deny faith. Instead, it insists that faith was never meant to replace responsibility, preparation, or clear-eyed engagement with reality.

Christianity, properly understood, was not designed to anaesthetise human agency or suspend the consequences of institutional failure.

That reality became clear to me very early in my university life. I remember years ago at the University of Cape Coast that my then mate and friend, Richard Nii Armah, Esq., and I would leave the student mock parliament at odd hours and were often late for lectures.

As soon as we appeared in the lecture hall, colleagues of ours would burst into uncontrollable laughter. To them, we were a bunch of unserious students who came to school only for fun.

Yet what appeared unserious to many was, in fact, a quiet apprenticeship in life. The Student Mock Parliament at the University of Cape Coast served as an informal yet powerful training ground for confidence, reasoning, persuasion, and leadership.

It was there that many of us learned to think on our feet, defend unpopular positions, absorb criticism, and articulate ideas before an audience. Many who passed through that space later distinguished themselves across law, academia, public service, policy, and governance.

Among those who passed through the UCC Student Mock Parliament are Thomas Martey Laari, Professor Sharif Mahmud Khalid, Professor Richard Asoma Kyere, Mr Kwabena Mintah Akondoh, and many others whose names may not all be listed here, but whose intellectual discipline was shaped in that same debating chamber.

Over time, I came to understand why that space mattered so deeply. I have come to notice that the very reason the majority of friends who gathered on that hallowed spot to debate student matters, in the miniature of the Oxford Union, later did so well in life is that they used one another as sentient research tools.

They tested arguments, sharpened logic, learned persuasion, and practised leadership in real time. They honed critical real-world skills such as public speaking, communication, confidence under scrutiny, and networking. These were not accidents. They were rehearsals for life beyond campus.

This emphasis on voice and engagement extended beyond formal debating spaces. Throughout my four years at the University of Cape Coast, there was a corner of the giant library on the third floor where I always sat.

On that reference desk were several materials on public speaking and mass communication, at least twenty books.

By the time I was leaving the university, I was the only person who had borrowed those books, as shown by the catalogue checks at the back. Nobody else did. Perhaps students were busy with quizzes and lecture notes. Maybe they believed grades alone would carry them. Possibly no one had told them otherwise.

This intentional focus was reinforced in the classroom as well. There was also a professor who taught me two courses in African Studies, an African American scholar, Professor Adjoa Asantewa. Her teaching method relied heavily on presentations conducted as cross-examinations.

Many students hated that approach because it was uncomfortable and exposed intellectual weaknesses. I enjoyed it sincerely because it mirrored real-world scrutiny. I made enemies in class, some of whom still misunderstand me to this day, because they believed the questions I asked after presentations were meant to lower their grades. Unbeknownst to them, those moments were intentional training grounds. I was learning critical aspects of public speaking and intellectual engagement that I knew I would need several years after school, when applause would not be guaranteed, and ideas would have to stand on their own merit.

This pattern of resistance to unconventional learning was not unique to UCC. Years later, I had a conversation with Dr Justice Srem-Sai, now the Deputy Attorney General of Ghana, who at the time was a Harvard Law student. In that conversation, he told me that several articles he and a few colleagues would write, mostly weekly, and post on notice boards on the University of Ghana campus, were greeted with scorn and derision.

Students would mark their grammar and write several unusual words on them. I told him about my similar encounters on the UCC campus and how I was met with the same fate. Ridicule, it seems, often precedes recognition.

My very good friend at EOCO, Abraham Paa Brew-Sam, a lawyer at EOCO, would bear me witness. In one article, which I titled "Grade Point Averages do Not measure Life," I boldly told the graduating class that what distinguishes a young man selling dog chains on the streets of Accra from one who graduated with a 4.0 grade point average from a university of choice is not intelligence alone. It is that one can only speak louder when people have gathered. Opportunity, visibility, and preparedness intersect in public spaces, not in private anxieties.

By the time I graduated from the University of Cape Coast, the consequences of these informal trainings were already visible. Peter Wadja had already completed an exchange program with Grand Valley State University. I had gone to Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia and returned. Today, I can count with pride that Mintah Akondoh, now the Minister of Health, Oppong Nkrumah, and Dr James Bomfeh Junior were all part of this same intellectual ecosystem, and I remain forever grateful to many more. These outcomes were not mystical rewards. They were the cumulative effect of exposure, preparation, and intentional engagement.

What separated these trajectories from others had very little to do with raw academic brilliance. The truth is that these are the exact skills the majority of students miss when they go to school and sit only behind lecture notes, memorising the names of Greek goddesses in classics or calculating dv/dt in calculus.

The school system in Ghana is not built to teach resume preparation, aptitude test-taking, public speaking, internship guarantees with industry, and several other fundamental skills needed in the real world. As a result, many graduates are academically decorated but professionally disarmed.

This is where spiritual language often rushes in to fill the explanatory vacuum. When preparation is lacking and opportunities are scarce, it becomes easier to blame witches, enemies, and unseen forces than to confront skill mismatches, institutional neglect, mentorship gaps, and personal unreadiness. Yet lived evidence repeatedly undermines this narrative. The same families accused of witchcraft produce both stagnation and distinction. The same villages said to be spiritually compromised produce both poverty and excellence. The difference is not metaphysical. It is structural, behavioural, and preparatory.

Faith should give courage to confront reality, not excuses to avoid it. Prayer should sharpen clarity, not blur responsibility.

When spirituality becomes the first explanation rather than the last refuge, a society begins to stagnate while feeling righteous. It is therefore with boldness and conviction that I state this final point. What holds a nation back is not spiritual attacks. In fact, we all live in homes where such beliefs exist, and faith has its place.

What truly holds us back is a lack of opportunity and, more importantly, preparation. Of course, the school system bears responsibility. But those of us who extricated ourselves from these limitations were not simply lucky.

We were doing other things besides what the system provided, often quietly and without applause.

The school system would not teach us how to write a resume. It would not prepare us for interviews. It would not teach us how to navigate the world. It is the intentional, well-integrated steps we take, even while at school, that culminate in big opportunities later in life. And when that moment comes, even if opportunity does not find us, we will create one.